The present invention relates to controlling the position of a single molecule, and more specifically, to systems and methods for trapping a segment of a linear polymer molecule in a nano-gap in the vicinity of a measurement instrument.
Molecules such as proteins, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA) are long linear polymers including several charged molecular segments (e.g., nucleotides). In order to analyze these types of linear molecules, it is desirable to isolate and take measurements of the individual components of the molecule. The segment of interest should be locked in place for some time, which is sufficient for the instrument to characterize this segment of the linear polymer molecule.